Blog

This March we will be celebrating metal in all its diversity. Come along and explore metals that have memory, a jet engine turbine blade made from a single crystal, and the wondrous material life of gold in the Materials Library. More

Are you a UCL student interested in an open science? Would you like to work on an ongoing project to make low-cost scientific tools accessible to kids? LEGO2NANO 2015 is recruiting for participants for this year’s summer school. More

Do you fancy being involved in a pilot study to investigate healthy materials? We are about to start our first round of interviews and we are looking for volunteers to give an hour of their time for a conversation in the Materials Library. More

Back in October, during Robots Week, we launched The Great Robot Egg Race. The challenge was to build a moving robot that could pick up an egg and travel a short distance before putting it down in a frying pan, without smashing it! The robot needed to travel over a variety of different terrains/surfaces, straddle a cube, go under a limbo pole, negotiate a sideways slope and navigate a slalom course to finally deliver the fresh, un-smashed egg into the pan. More

The nights are drawing in, it's getting colder and the Christmas festivities are underway.
For those who came to the Festival of Stuff earlier this year here is a video to remind you of warmer times: youtube
Below are some dates for your diaries of out next open days and next years Festival of Stuff. More

​This November, in partnership with the Crafts Council, the V&A and the RSA, we will be staging a London-wide extravaganza of materials and making, called Make:Shift:Do. As part of this, we will be hosting a public open day around the theme of Carbon and a selection of specialist masterclasses. This will be our last open day of 2014, so get it in your diaries now! More

This week in Beijing China, 12 Institute of Making members and 12 students from Beijing Universities collaborate to build a low-cost open-source Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) using LEGO and hacked electronic equipment, enabling high-school students to explore materials in miniature. More

Watch the introductory film for the Light Touch Matters research project: a collaboration between designers, design researchers and materials researchers from across the EU working on new and affordable products that respond to touch with light. More

From the 17th to the 21st of June we our having our first Festival of Stuff! Throughout the week there will be bookable masterclasses, workshops and Materials Library discovery sessions, culminating in an extravaganza of materials and making that will be open to all. More